Liz Truss: I was never given a chance

Former prime minister Liz Truss (James Manning/PA)

Liz Truss has said she was never given a “realistic chance” to implement her radical tax-cutting agenda by her party and by a “powerful economic establishment”.

In her first detailed comments since she was forced out of No 10, the former British prime minister said she had not appreciated the strength of the resistance she would face to her plans.

While she acknowledged that she was not “blameless” over the way her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s infamous mini-budget catastrophically unravelled, she still believed her approach to driving growth was the right one.

I assumed upon entering Downing Street that my mandate would be respected and accepted. How wrong I was

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, she said: “I am not claiming to be blameless in what happened, but fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support.

“I assumed upon entering Downing Street that my mandate would be respected and accepted. How wrong I was. While I anticipated resistance to my programme from the system, I underestimated the extent of it.

“Similarly, I underestimated the resistance inside the Conservative parliamentary party to move to a lower-tax, less-regulated economy.”

Ms Truss’s brief premiership last just 49 days as she was forced to quit after Mr Kwarteng’s £45 billion package of unfunded tax cuts panicked the markets and tanked the pound.